Left: President Reagan and
General Secretary Gorbachev on Red Square in front of St. Basil’s Cathedral,
May 31, 1988, with interpreter Pavel Palazhchenko to the right. Just out of
the picture is U.S. Navy lieutenant commander Woody Lee, carrying the
“football” briefcase with U.S. nuclear war plan options and launch codes for
missiles targeting Red Square. [Photo courtesy of Reagan Presidential
Library, Simi Valley, California]

President Reagan speaking at Moscow State University,
May 31, 1988. This briefing book’s co-editor, Svetlana
Savranskaya (then an MGU student), is in the front row,
third from right, wearing pink. [Photo courtesy of
Reagan Presidential Library, Simi Valley, California]

Washington
D.C., May 31, 2008 – Twenty years ago today, President
Ronald Reagan declared the end of the Cold War while walking
through Red Square and the Kremlin in Moscow during a summit
meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that was friendly and
largely ceremonial, according to the previously secret summit
transcripts published today on the Web by the National Security
Archive (www.nsarchive.org).

Asked by a reporter on the Kremlin grounds
May 31, 1988 about the famous “evil empire” speech of 1983, Reagan
responded, “I was talking about another time, another era.” The
underlying documents from the summit, obtained through Freedom of
Information Act requests in the U.S. and from the Gorbachev
Foundation in Moscow, show that Gorbachev was thwarted in his
efforts for rapid arms control progress by lack of trust on the
U.S. side, and that the “human factor” reflected in Reagan’s
comments was the most important outcome of the summit.

The documents include the official U.S.
transcripts of the face-to-face meetings in Moscow between Reagan
and Gorbachev, the President’s briefing book for the summit
(prepared by the State Department), notes from Soviet Politburo
sessions before and after the summit (taken by Gorbachev aide
Anatoly Chernyaev), the U.S. National Security Decision Directives
leading up to the summit, and the talking points sent to U.S.
embassies around the world after the summit.

The Web publication on the Moscow summit is the fourth in the
National Security Archive’s series of online briefing books
posting key U.S. and Soviet documents on each of the
Reagan-Gorbachev meetings (Geneva
1985, Reykjavik 1986, Washington 1987, and coming in December, New York 1988).

Read
the DocumentsNote:
The following documents are in PDF format.
You will need to download and install the free Adobe
Acrobat Reader to view.

This conversation provides a unique snapshot
of the global nature of the U.S.-Soviet competition and of
Gorbachev’s conviction that all the “painful knots that have built
up around the world” could be resolved if the Soviet Union and the
United States made a genuine cooperative effort to settle those
regional conflicts. Among the regional conflicts discussed are
those in Angola, Cambodia, the Iran-Iraq War, the Middle East and
most significantly Afghanistan. On February 8, 1988, Gorbachev
had announced that Soviet troops would leave Afghanistan starting
in May and would be completely gone by spring 1989 – an outcome
that the top CIA officials Robert Gates and Fritz Ermarth had bet
$25 and $50, respectively, would never happen.[1] Here, Gorbachev presses Shultz to move on finalizing the Geneva
negotiations on Afghanistan and speedy signing of the accords to
provide a model of superpower cooperation in settlement of
regional conflicts, and to ensure that Afghanistan could become a
neutral non-aligned country. Gorbachev and Shultz also discuss
U.S.-Soviet cooperation in the U.N. Security Council on the
Iran-Iraq war. Both express their concern about the
fundamentalist government in Iran and the Iranian factor in
Afghanistan and the Middle East. Concerned about the Iranian
influence, Shultz suggests jokingly that “the Iranians would not
mind fundamentalist governments in the Kremlin and Washington.”
From this conversation, one could get a sense how profoundly the
U.S.-Soviet relations changed by early 1988, when both sides seem
to be ready to work together on the issues where the differences
and interests previously appeared irreconcilable. This excerpt
released by the Gorbachev Foundation does not include the
discussion on strategic weapons and missile defense, which took
place in the first part of the meeting. At the time, Shultz and
the Soviets both are pushing for a START agreement to be ready by
the time of the Moscow summit.

Gorbachev informs the Politburo about his
conversations with Secretary of State Shultz. The tone of the
report is very upbeat and optimistic. At this point Gorbachev
still strongly believes that it would be possible to prepare the
START treaty on 50% reductions of strategic nuclear weapons by the
time of the Moscow summit and sign it while Reagan is still in
office. In 1987, that hope of reaching a fast agreement on
strategic weapons reductions drove many of Soviet concessions in
the INF negotiations, and the two leaders had agreed at the
Washington summit in December 1987 to move quickly to a START
agreement. Gorbachev sees a window of opportunity for arms
control because “because politically we have entered a new
situation in our relationship with the United States.” The Soviet
leader directly links the success of perestroika to deep
reductions in military spending while keeping basic parity with
the United States. He speaks strongly about the need to revise
the Soviet military budget to rein in defense spending. Yet on
this very day in Washington, President Reagan tells editors of the Washington Post that time is too short to reach agreement
on START by the time of the summit, in effect ratifying the
go-slow views of his new national security team, most of whom
(notably Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci and national security
adviser Colin Powell) remained skeptical of Gorbachev’s
intentions, although not as hostile as the departed hard-liners
Caspar Weinberger and Richard Perle. Shultz was taken by surprise
and dismayed at the shift, which undercut his efforts that
Gorbachev is talking about here.[2]

Gorbachev informs the Politburo about his
conversations with U.S. Senators Sam Nunn and Carl Levin and talks
between Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci and Defense Minister
Dmitry Yazov. Disappointed but still somewhat hopeful on START,
Gorbachev points out that the focus of arms control is now
shifting toward reductions of conventional weapons in Europe.
This document reflects the Soviet leader’s decision to move
seriously on the issue of the military imbalance in Europe—which
would eventually produce the startling announcement of deep Soviet
unilateral cuts in December 1988 in Gorbachev’s U.N. speech. Here
he calls the Politburo to “prepare the cards,” which he is going
to “put on the table” later taking into account proposals brought
by the U.S. Senators and those developed in European social
democratic circles.

The author and Russian culture expert
Suzanne Massie would meet with President Reagan some 21 times in
four years, starting in early 1984 at the time of Reagan’s
conciliatory “Ivan and Anya” speech. The Massie conversations
would educate the President about Russian culture and attitudes,
encouraging him to seek rapprochement with the Soviet Union, as
well as provide an informal back channel between the White House
and Soviet intellectuals. Here, the back channel includes an
official message from “even higher” levels in Moscow asking
whether Reagan still believed the USSR to be the “evil empire” and
if not, to make such a statement before the summit.

Gorbachev again briefly mentions the recent
visits of U.S. Senators Sam Nunn and Carl Levin, and Defense
Secretary Frank Carlucci to Moscow. He notes that his
conversation with the Senators was “one of the most substantive
conversations” and points to expanding possibilities that the
meeting signified. The General Secretary is very impressed with
the depth and sincerity of talks between Carlucci and Soviet
Minister of Defense Dmitry Yazov. In both conversations the
“human factor” played a great role, just as in Gorbachev’s own
meetings with President Reagan. The Soviet leader sounds slightly
surprised that interactions with Reagan’s supporters could be so
productive.

This Directive provides the wiring diagram
for the bureaucratic process in the U.S. government leading up to
the summit, including authorizing the various policy groups and
coordination mechanisms. Ultimately, the U.S. delegation to
Moscow would include more than 700 officials.

This State Department memorandum of
conversation records the third set of negotiations between the
U.S. Secretary of State and the Soviet Foreign Minister leading up
to the Moscow summit (February in Moscow, March in Washington, now
April back in Moscow). Shevardnadze presses for progress on
START, but Shultz responds that still-unresolved issues like
sea-launched cruise missiles (SLCMs) would not “reach full closure
during the next month,” so agreement is unlikely for the summit.
(Arguments over these nuclear-armed cruise missiles would hold up
START negotiations for years, pushed by the parochial interests of
the U.S. Navy rather than a consideration of the national
interest, but by 1991 their lack of strategic value would lead to
President George H. W. Bush’s unilateral decision to withdraw all
tactical nukes from U.S. ships.[3])
The bulk of the discussion here concerns human rights issues,
including an interesting exchange about the Vienna follow-up
meeting on the Helsinki Final Act (CSCE). Shultz raises his
“disappointment with the performance of the Soviet delegation” at
Vienna, which “was not prepared to go as far in its statements as
what the Soviet leadership was saying in Moscow.” Shevardnadze
responds, “We have a hard delegation” in Vienna, we tell them one
thing, “They do something different.”

This Directive sets out the Reagan
administration’s goals for the summit, and provides an interesting
contrast to Gorbachev’s and Shevardnadze’s eagerness to negotiate
strategic arms control and conventional forces reductions. The
American side explicitly seeks only to “consolidate the gains” on
the standard four-part agenda including human rights, regional
conflicts, bilateral relations and arms control, although there is
a rhetorical commitment to “attainment as soon as possible of a
START agreement” (it would not happen until 1991, and even then,
only bring U.S. and Soviet nuclear weapons down to about the level
where they were when START negotiations began in 1982). The
continuing caution and skepticism on the U.S. side is reflected in
the warning against “exaggerated expectations on the future pace
and achievement of U.S.-Soviet relations or the reform process
under way in the Soviet Union” – a stark contrast to the
possibilities envisioned by the Soviet leader, and even by Reagan
himself at the Reykjavik summit only a year and a half earlier.

The Soviet ambassador to Washington, Yuri
Dubinin, calls on President Reagan’s national security adviser to
“see if the United States had a concept of the President’s visit
to Moscow.” Powell responds that Reagan anticipates “no major
problems” and “no surprise[s]” but simply seeks “to learn about
the Soviet Union and about its people” – underlining the largely
ceremonial purpose of the summit as seen from the U.S. side.
Dubinin brings up the sea-launched cruise missile issue again to
no avail, and on issues from ABM to Central America, the two
officials simply agree to disagree. Powell seeks to reassure the
Soviets about various Reagan speeches earlier in the spring that
seemed to gloat about the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan and
take credit for pressuring Moscow – to which the Soviets had taken
offense, most directly when Gorbachev himself confronted Shultz
only a week earlier in Moscow. Powell remarks again “we each have
many different constituencies, and that one should not look at
what the President said from place to place in the United States,
but reread the speeches, toasts and statements he had issued
during the Washington Summit.”

This remarkable 70-page briefing book
prepared by the State Department for President Reagan provides a
detailed point-by-point review of practically every issue in
U.S.-Soviet relations from human rights to fisheries, from START
to terrorism, and from the long-planned Kiev consulate to the
unrest in the Soviet national republics. The format lends itself
to the kind of quick review and annotation that the President
preferred: bullet points, short summary memos, talking point
outlines of the U.S. and Soviet positions, and tangible examples
that could be used by speechwriters and on the index cards that
Reagan always carried for his sessions with Gorbachev. According
to the drafting dates on the various memos, State Department
officials drafted them starting in early April 1988 and continuing
through mid-May, though the final compilation is clearly complete
by the time the President and the Secretary of State leave
Washington on May 25. Substantively, perhaps the most remarkable
assertion in this package is the summary near the end of “Soviet
Foreign Policy Trends.” Reflecting the cautious and
still-conflicted view in the Washington establishment, the memo
asserts that “Gorbachev’s primary foreign policy objective has
been to achieve stability and predictability in foreign relations,
in order to create breathing room for domestic reforms.” In fact,
as the now-available Politburo records and Chernyaev diaries show,
Gorbachev’s aim is to abolish nuclear weapons and end the Cold War
in Europe, leading him to initiatives the ostrich-like U.S.
officials never predicted, like the unilateral reductions in
Soviet troops he would announce at the United Nations at the end
of 1988.

This 2-page overview apparently prepared
just before the President’s departure from Washington provides the
State Department’s main talking points about the summit. The memo
in effect keeps the government’s spokespeople on the same page (or
2 pages, as the case may be), emphasizing that “Moscow should be
where the dialogue catches its second wind, not be seen as its
high-water mark.”

This cover memo from the State Department to
the national security adviser conveys the materials for Mrs.
Reagan’s briefing book, of which only the 2-page table of contents
and the two scope papers (“Moscow Summit” and “Recent Developments
in the Soviet Union”) are currently available. The table of
contents provides a succinct overview of the schedule, including
Mrs. Reagan’s quick visit to Leningrad; and the scope papers
similarly give concise summaries of U.S. expectations for the
summit (“the first [visit] by an American president in fourteen
years”) and U.S. analysis of Gorbachev’s situation, including
“recent high-level challenges to his authority.” This last phrase
refers to the so-called Nina Andreeva affair, when a Leningrad
chemistry teacher published on March 13 a striking anti-reform
message titled “I Cannot Betray My Principles” while Gorbachev was
out of the country – a publication that would not have happened
without backing from conservatives like Ligachev on the
Politburo. It would take three weeks before the new thinkers
would marshal their response in the form of a full-page Pravda
rebuttal.

This minute-by-minute agenda prepared
jointly by the State Department and the White House staff provides
locations and times for each event of the trip, and thumbnail
sketches of the planned remarks and statements to be made by the
President from May 26 through his return to Washington on June 3,
including each of the face-to-face meetings with Gorbachev as well
as his Finnish and Moscow welcomes and his London debriefings
after the summit with Prime Minister Thatcher and Japanese Prime
Minister Takeshita. Not on this agenda is the impromptu walk by
the two leaders on Red Square, which would be suggested by Reagan
to Gorbachev on May 30 and memorably accomplished on May 31.

Apparently signed by President Reagan in
Helsinki en route to Moscow, this Directive details the specific
arms control goals on the U.S. side for the Moscow discussions.
With the advantage of access to the internal Soviet documentation
of the time, we now know that much more dramatic arms reductions
were there to be seized if the Americans had more boldness and
more confidence in Gorbachev. But just as Gorbachev’s lack of
trust in Reagan led the Soviet leader to miss the Reykjavik
opportunity for nuclear abolition, so too the misguided American
assessment of Gorbachev’s intentions in 1988 would create yet
another missed opportunity for reducing the nuclear threat. After
the end of the Cold War, reading these details about – for example
– the counting rules for air-launched cruise missiles takes on the
quality of medieval theological debates over how many angels can
dance on the head of a pin, yet countless person-years of the best
and the brightest officials on both sides of the Cold War would be
devoted to this kind of minutia.

The memcons of the Reagan-Gorbachev summits
provide an extraordinary and practically verbatim testament to the
power of the “human factor” in diplomatic relations. This memcon
of the opening discussion at the Moscow summit refers back to the
original Geneva summit in 1985, when the two leaders signed a
joint statement “that nuclear war cannot be won and must never be
fought” – the maximum goal of the Soviet side coming in to Geneva,
which Reagan completely agreed with, to the Soviets’ surprise.
Here, Gorbachev gives Reagan the text of a proposed new statement
to the effect that “no problem in dispute can be resolved, nor
should it be resolved, by military means” and that
“non-interference in internal affairs and freedom of
socio-political choice” should be the “inalienable standards of
international relations.” Reagan then says he “likes” the
statement, but once the leaders leave the “one-on-one”session (it
actually is four-on-four with interpreters and notetakers), U.S.
officials would object strenuously to Gorbachev’s proposed
statement, especially phrases like “peaceful coexistence” and the
implication that U.S. support for anti-communist insurgents like
the contras in Nicaragua (one of Reagan’s favorite causes) is
illegitimate. For his part, Reagan presents his traditional
handful of cases of dissidents and refuseniks, and the two leaders
proceed to an interesting discussion of religious freedom,
including Reagan’s frank description of his own son Ron as “an
atheist, though he called himself an agnostic.”

Now the two leaders meet with their top
officials at the table, and again Gorbachev makes a plea for the
statement against use of military force, but draws no response
from the American side. The almost 2-hour-long meeting centers
around the two sides’ negotiating talking points on arms control
topics across the whole range of acronyms, START and ABM and ACLMs
and SLCMs and ICBM sublimits, to name a few. At one point
Gorbachev raises again the Soviet view of missile defense: “The
President, he stated amiably, was being deceived” about weapons in
space as part of the strategic defense initiative. Gorbachev says
Reagan “had initially been deceived by former Defense Secretary
Weinberger; perhaps Carlucci was now doing the same thing” with
“Shultz’s help, … moving the President in the wrong direction.”
Gorbachev “wanted to state this in their presence so they could
defend themselves.” At this point, Reagan intervenes and restates
his long-standing arguments for missile defense, including his
pledge “if a workable system were devised, the US would make
deployment of such a system available to all countries, and would
not deploy until nuclear weapons had been eliminated.” In
Reagan’s view, missile defense would be like a gas mask you would
keep even after chemical weapons were banned, as defense against
an accident or a madman. But for Gorbachev, the problem with
missile defense continues to be its possible use as a space-based
platform for a first strike – the perennial Soviet security
nightmare dating back to Hitler. Gorbachev effectively admits the
Krasnoyarsk radar is a treaty violation and offers again to
dismantle it in the context of a larger ABM agreement, and then
turns the tables on Reagan by bringing up American resistance to
verification inspections of U.S. ships and factories in contrast
to Reagan’s favorite and frequently-repeated Russian proverb
“trust but verify.” The most interesting part of the discussion
concerns conventional forces in Europe, in which Gorbachev –
presaging his December 1988 unilateral cuts – refers to Warsaw
Pact-approved proposals for a 500,000-troop cut on both sides.
The U.S. side demurs, with Shultz saying such ideas “have to be
marketed to our respective allies” first. Gorbachev admits the
Soviets have the advantage in the central European theater, but
argues that NATO is superior on the southern flank, and claims the
reason the U.S. is resisting exchanging full data on the military
balance is because such data would show “there was no superiority
on the Soviet side.”

These excerpts from the Soviet transcripts
of the Moscow summit, as released by the Gorbachev Foundation,
show once again what the Soviet side regarded as the most
important issues discussed at the summit—negotiations on the
strategic nuclear weapons and verification of compliance. On
strategic weapons, Gorbachev acts very assertively pressuring the
U.S. side to reach agreements on the remaining problems—sublevels
on mobile ICBMs and sea-launched cruise missiles. On the issue
of verification, now it is the Soviet side that is ready to move
much further than the Americans, and challenges them to abide by
their own earlier statements: “you always said that you are for
the strictest verification, that you are ready for any kind of
verification. And now we are persuading you to agree to this kind
of verification.” Gorbachev argues for the most comprehensive
verification regime, which would also include naval forces, and
production facilities, especially noting the need “to overcome the
resistance of American naval forces on this question.” While not
a complete transcript, the Soviet notes track well with the more
detailed U.S. memcons that are now available.

One major goal of the U.S. side at the Moscow
summit is to engage with the Russian people, including as a
priority the Russian Orthodox Church. But a planned meeting with
the Church Patriarch would fall victim to the Church’s insistence
that Reagan not meet with activist priests like the human rights
hero Father Gleb Yakunin (present at the Spaso House reception
later this day). So instead, Reagan’s advance team would arrange
this visit to the Danilov Monastery hosted by a metropolitan of
the Church (equivalent to a Catholic cardinal). President
Reagan’s prepared remarks would mention the Ukrainian Catholic (Uniate)
Church as a way to push back at the Russian Orthodox Church’s
official desire to become an exclusive state religion. Here, Mrs.
Reagan initiates an interesting dialogue about whether believers
in Russia “would ever be free of the state.” In response,
Metropolitan Filaret says “It was hoped that, after the meetings
between the President and the General Secretary, all such problems
would go away.”

This cable written by U.S. ambassador Jack
Matlock describes a highlight of Reagan’s trip to Moscow, the
reception at the ambassador’s residence, Spaso House, on May 30,
1988, for 42 leading dissidents and refuseniks, with their spouses
and children. Matlock reports that the reception “went off
without a hitch, thanks in part to KGB and militia cooperation,”
that the President’s speech was “vigorously applauded,” and that
“Soviet media commentary followed swiftly and was biting and
sarcastic.”

This conversation begins with Reagan’s gift
to Gorbachev of an American-made denim jacket, which Gorbachev
calls “a memorable gift,” but Reagan does not know whether it will
actually fit the Soviet leader. After Gorbachev tells Reagan
about various Soviet citizens who have named their kids after Ron
and Nancy, the two leaders discuss perestroika, capitalism,
Harley-Davidson motorcycles, a chocolate brownie entrepreneur,
border controls, Cuban-Americans in Miami, and assorted matters.
They end with a philosophical agreement that the real task is to
“eliminate the distrust that has led to the arms race.”

This session between the U.S.
Secretary of State and the Soviet Foreign Minister begins with
Shultz’s ironic statement that the two would have to talk about
regional issues, at least “to touch on” them, so “that those
outside the room know that each regional subject was mentioned at
the Summit.” After some minutes of discussion of the Vienna
CSCE meeting and a draft paper from the neutral/non-aligned
states, Shultz finally defers the matter by saying “[w]e are
simply spinning our wheels on this issue now.” When
Shevardnadze comments that Shultz has a difficult trip ahead of
him to the Middle East, the American Secretary of State says he
“was only going because he liked failure so much.” The friendly
tenor of the talks comes through in various jokes, including the
Shultz-Shevardnadze-Carlucci banter about how the Soviet Union
would be a non-aligned state once all military pacts were
dissolved, but such dissolution might risk the defense secretary’s
job.

President Reagan and General Secretary Gorbachev on June
1, 1988 signing the ratification documents for the
Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty that had
just been approved by the U.S. Senate and the Supreme
Soviet. [Photo courtesy of Reagan Presidential
Library, Simi Valley, California]

In the absence of a major arms control
agreement to announce, the U.S. side emphasizes the multitude of
bilateral agreements wrapped up at the Moscow summit, and the
State Department provides a helpful page of talking points that
spins the lack of major progress by describing the agreements as
each “a small, but real accomplishment.”

This final official session before the two
leaders exchange the ceremonial INF ratification documents centers
around presentations by Shevardnadze and by Shultz of the two
sides’ positions, about which the best that can be said is that
discussions were friendly and candid, even though not much
progress has been made. When Gorbachev and Reagan give their
own summaries, the discussion of regional issues in particular
shows the very different perspectives of the two sides, or as
Gorbachev comments, “the American assessment as to the cause of
regional problems was at variance with Soviet assessments.”
Gorbachev returns to the draft statement he gave to Reagan on the
first day, and reminds the President of his initial positive
reaction, which would be quickly rescinded once the document was
in the hands of Shultz, Carlucci, Powell and the other senior U.S.
officials. Why not sign off on such a strong statement,
Gorbachev asks, rather than the rather bland Joint Statement
produced by the staff negotiators? But the Americans respond
by pointing to the objectionable phrasing, and even a last-minute
personal plea from Gorbachev to Reagan does not reverse the
American decision.

This summary from the U.S. assistant
secretary of state for human rights, Richard Schifter, describes
the progress in the Soviet Union on human rights issues, and the
commitment of “the majority of the Soviet leadership generally”
for more improvement, but remarks that “the gulf between that
commitment and the reality throughout the country is enormous.”

In this report to the Politburo on his
meetings with Reagan, Gorbachev has little to show for the
results. No significant breakthroughs were achieved and no
treaties were signed. His main hope—a quick progress on
START did not materialize. Looking back at the summit,
Gorbachev talks about the importance of Reagan just being in
Moscow, meeting with ordinary people and appreciating the Russian
culture. He stresses that during the summit, U.S. citizens
could see the Soviet Union on their TV screens all day long, and
that “[t]he ordinary American has seen the ordinary Russian.” The
Soviet leader emphasizes the importance of “the human factor” once
again in bilateral relations. In his memoir, Gorbachev notes
that the most important result of the Moscow summit was Reagan’s
statement during his Red Square walk that the Soviet Union was no
longer an “evil empire. … It was another time another era”—words,
which essentially meant a proclamation of the end of the Cold War.[4]

This detailed 19-page cable provides the
State Department’s official talking points for all posts to use
“in briefing host government officials at suitably high level”
about the Moscow summit. Referring to the Soviet attempt to
get a statement against the use of military force, the cable says
“we had to bring the Soviets back down to earth” and “we were not
going back to the kind of vague concepts we had seen in the 1970s
that were subject to differing interpretations and could result in
misunderstandings and recriminations.” But Gorbachev in his
closing press conference would make clear that an American
endorsement of his “new thinking” on security policy, and
specifically such a rejection of “military means” to solve
problems, would have helped him in his efforts to restructure
Soviet foreign policy, and put his own establishment more on the
defensive, thus allowing him to make more reforms even more
quickly. Gorbachev would express disappointment that “the
opportunity to take a big stride in shaping civilized
international relations has been missed.”[5]

This diary entry shows that preparations for
the Moscow summit were not the main issue that preoccupied the
Soviet leadership in the late spring of 1988. Once Gorbachev
realized in the beginning of May that the summit would not bring
the desired agreement on strategic nuclear weapons, the focus of
attention shifted to preparation for the XIX Party Conference,
which took place at the end of June 1988. Most speechwriters
and Gorbachev’s advisers were occupied by drafting the theses for
the conference at several country houses around Moscow. The
relative importance of the summit comes through Chernyaev’s
unintentional phrase “[w]e took a break from Volynskoe-2 due to
Reagan’s visit.” In his diary he also notes that the main
achievement of the summit was Reagan’s realization that the Soviet
Union was no longer a Cold War adversary of the past: “Reagan saw
that we are not an ‘empire of evil,’ but normal people, with a
rich history at that, and… we are such a giant that you cannot
intimidate or dazzle us.”

Notes

[1] Don Oberdorfer, From the Cold War
to a New Era (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998),
pp. 274-275.

[2] Oberdorfer, p. 289

[3] For an extended discussion of why
limits on SLCMs were much more in the U.S. national interest
than the Soviets, and how the Navy’s resistance to on-board
inspections gave the moral high ground to the Soviets, see the
analysis by the then-U.S. ambassador to Moscow, Jack Matlock, in
his book Reagan and Gorbachev: How the Cold War Ended (New York:
Random House, 2004), pp. 277-279.